Business of Beauty
Estée Lauder Puts $15 Million Behind Young Women's Breast Cancer Research
Estée Lauder commits $15 million over five years to launch BCRF's Global Research Initiative on Breast Cancer in Younger Women, the largest coordinated effort of its kind.
The Estée Lauder Companies will give $15 million to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to fund what the organizations call the largest coordinated global research effort dedicated to breast cancer in younger women.
The five-year commitment, backed by the Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation, establishes the Global Research Initiative on Breast Cancer in Younger Women. It targets a population that researchers say is under-served by current funding: an estimated 0.6 percent of breast cancer research funding since 2020 has gone specifically toward younger women, according to figures shared by BCRF and the Estée Lauder Companies.
The numbers explain the urgency. Diagnoses among women under 45 rose 11 percent between 2012 and 2022. Breast cancer in this group is more likely to be found at a later stage, and women diagnosed before 40 are nearly 40 percent more likely to die from the disease.
"Too many young women are hearing the words 'you have breast cancer' at a time in their lives when they never imagined they would, yet research focused specifically on younger women has historically received only a fraction of breast cancer funding," Donna McKay, president and CEO of BCRF, tells ELLE exclusively.
"This extraordinary initiative, made possible by the Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation, allows the Breast Cancer Research Foundation's leading scientists to understand what is driving the rise in early-onset breast cancer and turn those discoveries into better ways to predict risk, prevent breast cancer, detect it earlier and treat it more effectively. Young women deserve answers, and they deserve them with urgency."
The project builds on one of the longest-running corporate-research partnerships in the beauty industry. Evelyn H. Lauder founded BCRF in 1993, one year after launching the Estée Lauder Companies' Breast Cancer Campaign and co-creating the pink ribbon. Since then, the Estée Lauder Companies and its Charitable Foundation have provided more than $123 million to BCRF and supported more than 400 research grants.
"The Estée Lauder Companies has a longstanding commitment to advancing breast cancer research, and I know my mother, Evelyn H. Lauder, would be so proud to see us carry her vision forward," William P. Lauder, chair of the Estée Lauder Companies' board of directors and co-chair of BCRF, said in a statement. "She believed deeply in the power of research to change and ultimately save lives. Through this donation, we can expand our understanding of breast cancer in younger women, an area where there is still much to learn. I am grateful to the brilliant scientific researchers whose curiosity, dedication, and discoveries continue to bring us closer to our shared goal of a world free from breast cancer."
The initiative signals where the company's cause platform goes next: shifting its three-decade pink ribbon legacy toward a defined scientific gap, with BCRF's scientists tasked to convert findings into better risk prediction, prevention, earlier detection and treatment for women under 45.
Source: Elle Beauty
Amara Osei
Show full bio
Staff writer covering media and advertising at Eurasian Beauty Journal.
